Senselessness Quotes

• Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.

  Ellen Raskin

  Life, Blow, Self

  Ellen Raskin (2004). “The Westing Game (Puffin Modern Classics)”, p.42, Penguin

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• One day, I just thought, if you see a bird with a broken leg, you really have the urge to do something about it and help the bird, then at the same time you go to a restaurant and eat a chicken or something. It doesn't make any sense.

  Patrik Baboumian

  Sympathy, Compassion, Bodybuilding

  "Vegan strongman shoulders 550 kg — a record, perhaps — at vegetarian food fest" by Jessica Mcdiarmid, www.thestar.com. September 8, 2013.

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• I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

  C. S. Lewis

  Happiness, Thinking, Awkward

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.7, Faber & Faber

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• What really makes one indignant about suffering isn't the thing itself but the senselessness of it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Suffering, Indignant

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• Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

  Theodor Adorno

  Animal, Thinking, Holocaust

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• Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Love Is, Rocks, Bullshit

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• Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions - and to laugh at it.

  Martin Esslin

  Baby, Lying, Reality

  Martin Esslin (2009). “The Theatre of the Absurd”, p.429, Vintage

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• What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Suffering, Criminals, Criminal Mind

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “The Genealogy of Morals”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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• We have as a nation been duped by those who use our guilt about how we treated the innocent pawns in the Vietnam War game - the soldiers - into missing the point once again about the utter senselessness that is war.

  Steven Weber

  War, Games, Missing

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.

  Carl Jung

  Suffering, Neurosis, Emptiness

  "Modern Man in Search of a Soul".

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• I felt the ruthfulness and senselessness of war so acutlely that I wrote the first three stanzas of which, are in effect a prayer.

  Richard Eberhart

  Prayer, War, Three

  "The Poetry of War 1939-45". Book edited by Ian Hamilton, 1965.

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• What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Long, People, Childhood

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1989). “I Cannot be Silent: Writings on Politics, Art and Religion by Leo Tolstoy”

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• The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

  Karl Shapiro

  Father, Giving, Body

  Karl Jay Shapiro (1953). “Poems, 1940-1953”, New York : Random House

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• That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.

  Robert Walser

  Mouths

  Robert Walser (2014). “Jakob von Gunten”, p.12, New York Review of Books

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• It was so wonderful outside that even the wild senselessness of this enormous death, whose music I hear again and again, could not disturb me from my great enjoyment!

  Max Beckmann

  Wonderful, Enormous, Enjoyment

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• You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.

  Ayn Rand

  Ambition, World, Moments

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.2125, Penguin

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• I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean?

  Charles Bukowski

  Mean, Giving, Awareness

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• We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Art, Honor, Mind

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